PRAISE |
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"Can prayer cure clinical depression? According to Lindsey Crittenden's thoughtful memoir, the answer is yes and no.…. The skeptic who learned to pray finds, finally, that God helps those who help themselves."
— Dallas Morning News |
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"Ten years ago Crittenden walked timidly into an Episcopal church in Berkeley. Overwhelmed with grief, she needed something to sustain her the way water had held her when she was a child learning to swim. Therapy had helped her deal with her beloved younger brother's death, but it was not enough. A priest suggested prayer. In this exquisitely written memoir, she traces her experience of prayer from hesitant beginnings-"I left 'God' out of it, as I repeated the simple statement. 'You are here, I am here'"-to regular, disciplined practice. Prayer, she told an uncle, was like writing. "If I waited for inspiration, I'd never write a word.... I had to make prayer a habit, to go to it the way I went each morning to the desk. Not to summon prayer, but to tap into what was already there." Crittenden, whose essay on her mother's death appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing 2004, faced repeated bereavement as she learned to trust God, herself, and others. Nowadays, she writes, "being in community holds me like a trapeze harness for sailing out over the void." Fans of Nora Gallagher and Patricia Hampl will welcome her narrative of spiritual exploration and discovery."
— Publishers Weekly, starred review |
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"In her poignant memoir The Water Will Hold You, Lindsey Crittenden explores the evolution of her prayer life as a relationship with God. ... Crittenden's language aches with an authenticity that is beautiful and raw as she paints a portrait of her journey with God—'from infatuation, to passion, to commitment, to crisis, to comfortable.' Though Crittenden’s views about the nature of prayer are powerful, it is her sentiment—so genuine and real that the reader feels like a voyeur peeking into a window of her soul—that makes this book such a treasure. The Water Will Hold You is not necessarily for those who already understand the importance and power of prayer, but instead perhaps for the world's cynics—those who are not sure if they want to believe and those who do not yet know what they believe. "
— Bookpage |
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"Three years after her brother was shot to death, Lindsey Crittenden wandered into a Berkeley church — and rediscovered prayer, as revealed in The Water Will Hold You, her intensely moving saga of love and loss and love, in that order."
— Anneli Rufus, East Bay Express Quick Picks |
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"Honest, gutsy and written with a poet's ear, this book of spiritual exploration is sure to resonate with readers of all religious persuasions. "
— SRQ -- Sarasota Premier Magazine |
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"Lindsey Crittenden’s new memoir, The Water Will Hold You: A Skeptic Learns to Pray, is by turns lyric, wise, dark, and cheerfully neurotic.... Crittenden's prose is effortless and elegant, her sense of story engaging and true, and the people in her life delightfully drawn—especially her mercurial, tragic brother and her bright young nephew. Best of all is her voice: she attains just enough critical distance from her own good-girl neuroses to invite you to laugh at her and feel with her at the same time as she strains toward that most difficult lesson that competent people have to learn: how to release a measure of control and lean back into God. "
— Image Update |
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"Technically, this isn't Lindsey Crittenden's first book -- but it's certainly her debut in this form: a book-length spiritual memoir with the mysteriously uncomfortable ring of a real person sorting out the strands of memory, fear, desire, disappointment and transcendent hope. Clearly, Crittenden's journey isn't over and here's hoping this is just the first of such memoirs. This doesn't have a clear-cut evangelical ending waiting in the final chapter. There's no list of 10 easy steps to achieve a life like the author's. And, in that honest approach to the subject -- lies the book's real power. "
— Spiritscholars.org |
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"A plain, honest story of a skeptic's voyage not only into prayer but into life."
— Nora Gallagher, author of Changing Light |
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"Prayer, as Lindsey Crittenden lives it, is not some pious mental exercise, but a state of receptiveness. This is a thinking person's spiritual book: rich, gutsy, and written with poetic grace that powers a touching family saga. The Water Will Hold You is absolutely exquisite."
— Rachel Howard, author of The Lost Night |